Lucky Number
by NX-Odd
Summary: George waits for Fred to come pick up his broken pieces. After 11 years, he learns how to fix them himself.


**TITLE: **Lucky Number

**FANDOM: **Harry Potter

**DISCLAIMER: **If only I could own them.

**SETTING: **11 years after the Battle of Hogwarts.

**NOTES:** I actually have no idea how I even started writing this, it just sort of happened. This is my first real fic, any comments at all are appreciated! Constructive criticism is very welcomed! Also if I chose the wrong rating, please let me know (gotta get the hang of this).

**NOTE 2: **The obvious title would have been _Eleven_, so naturally I had to call it something else. Also, I am a teenage girl writing from the perspective of a 30 year old man, so I apologize deeply if it sounds awkward.

**SUMMARY:** George waits for Fred to come pick up his broken pieces. After 11 years, he learns how to fix them himself.

* * *

**Lucky Number**

"_If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours."_

_-Khalil Gibran_

* * *

Eleven.

eleven-

Eleven. E-le-ven.

The number eleven was always important to us Weasleys. Somehow it slipped itself into our daily lives, our day-to-day tasks, until it became a habit, our little family tradition. Eleven years old meant finally going to Hogwarts; an eleventh birthday meant lucky double digits and an eleven layer rainbow cake. Of course, there aren't eleven colors in the rainbow, so we had to invent some. Eleven hours was the time it took to make a Weasley sweater. Eleven minutes, generally, for Mum to complete her lecture and calm down enough for us to slip away. Eleven seconds was the time it took sprint down the stairs, from the top floor all the way to the kitchen, if you could manage it without tripping and dying. I know this, because once I clocked the time with him.

Freddie.

God, even after all these years, it still haunts me every day like nothing else ever could. I tried to move on, to accept that he was gone, I really did, but in reality we all know that it's impossible to forget your own reflection. To forget yourself. I kept the joke shop running, kept in touch with all our old friends, even dated Angelina, his ex-girlfriend, for a while. Now, I realize that it was all just a way to keep myself from completely losing it. If I couldn't be _with_ Freddie, I could just _be_ him, so that I wouldn't truly lose him, not yet. And if it weren't for that bloody gaping hole in my head, I could have fooled everyone, even myself, into believing that we had never lost him. I didn't care that I was throwing George away, because really, who was George without Fred anyways?

And yet.

Freddie was always so impulsive, so ready to fly away, that I could never keep him, trap him down here with me when he'd already left. I couldn't hold on, so I let him go, let him soar away chasing brighter things. And for the first time, I was truly alone.

I couldn't keep it up, couldn't move on, couldn't handle the enormity of my _aloneness._

Eventually everything fell away, until it was just me again, just George Weasley, Georgie the quiet(er) twin, the other half, the _twin that got left behind_, the-

Not a twin anymore.

Now Ron runs the joke shop, and Angelina's off with some tosser who probably makes her happier than either of us could have. I haven't spoken to anyone outside of my family in years. Everything's grey, so grey, that I can't remember anything besides this numbness. Sometimes I'm not sure if the hurt is even real anymore, if it's not just slipped away and left a hole in my chest, in the space that Freddie used to occupy. All I've got left now are these eleven bottles of Firewhiskey, so that maybe I'll be able to forget that today marks eleven years now, eleven years since he left.

One- two- three- six- eleven? shots later and the room's dark, my head's spinning, and I've got this fierce, fiery ache in my chest. I hope that it's just the whiskey, but I also hope a little more that it's something else. Then something shifts- the air? The room? My feet? –and I'm doing the one thing I swore I would never do on this day.

I'm gazing at myself in the mirror, wait, no, not myself_-_

The Firewhiskey coating my throat and my mouth and my brain erases the hole in his ear, adds another freckle under his eye, make his hair a little longer, a little redder, a little more _fiery_, until, until-

I'm staring at myself, but not myself. I'm staring at my brother, but also my best friend.

Then the tears come, my vision blurs and now there are two of us, side by side, together again, but _no, that is not a memory that I can bear tonight,_ not when he's so obviously and undeniably _not here._

So there's nothing I can do but break it, smash the mirror and the memory and save them both for another day, when the edges might not be so sharp, when the cool glass might not feel so acutely lonely_._

Something shatters inside me along with the mirror; something that I thought was already broken beyond repair. The pieces go flying, spinning in great arcs, cutting through the cords that I used to bind up my memories of him, of us, of when I was happy. I see the two of us giggling, running, shouting, flying, all in a desperate blur, until I stop on one clear image: It's Freddie, laughing. Just Fred, cackling madly at some long-lost joke. But I know that I'm there too, that we're together, because he's laughing at something that I said. I know it because I can feel myself smile; can hear myself start to giggle until we're both howling with laughter and cracking up together.

Slowly, the slivers and shards of my heart creep back together, and I remember how to _feel._

~ ⓫ ~

I remember now why our favorite number was always eleven. Double digits, lucky twin numbers for lucky twin boys. 1 + 1 = 2, Fred + George = Best Friends Forever.

April 1 comes around, and I start to celebrate my birthday again. This time, I cut the cake in half and put 31 candles on the left, 11 on the right. Freddie finds me again. Or, maybe I find him. I see him in pictures and memories, in the bird by my window, in the patterns of freckles on my hands.

Every year I add one candle to the left, but the right side always stays the same. Because eleven is how I'll always remember him. Both of us, eleven, him dragging me excitedly onto the Hogwarts Express for the first time, me feeling a just a little less scared, because Freddie is next to me and we are together.


End file.
